An Interview with Andrew
Wise, Vice President, Talent Management & Organizational Development
Interviewer: Darwin Ferreiras, Vice President, SHRM Lehman College
Student Chapter
Bio:
Andrew
Wise has worked at the Visiting Nurse Service of New York (VNSNY) for 17 years. Mr. Wise has over 20 years of experience in
the Human Resources field. The Visiting Nurse Service of New York is the
largest non-profit home health care agency in New York, providing many
different healthcare services to many diverse
communities for nearly 125 years.
What do you do
at the Visiting Nurse Service of New York(VNSNY)?
“I oversee
Recruitment and Staffing for the organization, Organizational Development (OD)
which is change management, learning & development, talent management and
college relations. I have worked at the Visiting Nurse Service of New York for
17 years.”
In what capacities
have you worked at VNSNY?
“I started out
as a Recruitment Specialist, and then was promoted to Manager of Recruitment
where I oversaw the recruitment for the Therapist groups, Business Development, and Corporate employees. I moved
into OD around 2008; I wanted to do
something different. I then moved up the ranks and became the head of the OD
department and then we combined some things here in HR which is why I am now
the VP of both Talent Management and OD. “
Do you have a SHRM certification? If so, why did you decide
to get one?
“Yes, I did
receive a SHRM certification (Senior
Professional in Human Resources) in 2008. I just decided to become certified
because I had just moved to the world of Organizational Development after I had
been in Recruitment and Staffing for about twelve years. I wanted to increase
my general knowledge about Human Resources
so I thought it would be a good
structured way for me to learn a little bit about each different part. “
What brought
you to the Human Resources field?
“I don’t know
if SHRM is going to like this one. It is interesting because it was a couple of
things. It was a coincidence because I am also a classically trained musician,
so I was free-lancing after graduate school for about two years. As you can
imagine, being a freelancer, it’s very
hard to make ends meet, so I needed
something a little bit more steady. I actually
got a job at an organization called ILX Systems, which was part of
Thomson-Reuters when it existed as a receptionist. At this organization, I met a woman named Alyson B.,
who said ‘you know, you would make a really good
recruitment assistant’ and I said ‘what’s that?’ (chuckles), so I started
acting as a recruitment assistant and then eventually started recruiting people
and then the supervision of their technical recruitment. It is interesting because, in music school, my work study was in
the career office for the University of
Michigan. There is a correlation there that I just didn’t expect. I’ve been in
the HR field for a total of 22 years. “
In your
opinion, what is the most difficult challenge you face when dealing with change
in the organization?
“I think the
hardest thing is getting everybody on the same page, and that includes
leadership down to employees because everyone has a different perspective and
people have different driving priorities. I think it can be very difficult to
sometimes connect the two. It is
sometimes hard for people who are in positions as employees who may not be as connected
to leadership to understand sometimes the ‘why?’ of the change and I think it
can be hard for leadership to sometimes understand the day to day impacts on
employees because neither group are always connected to each other in that way.
I think it can be very hard to bridge that understanding”
What are the
essential skills and competencies needed for a career in HR?
“There are
probably quite a few. I think one is the ability to learn very quickly. There
are not only things in HR, there are
things in any business, that are changing at a
rapid pace and you must keep up with it. You have to be able to think on
your toes, you should be very agile and flexible because you never know what you’re going to
be doing one day to the next. I think you need to have very strong interpersonal skills. First, you must
be very self-aware, you should understand how you interact in different
circumstances with different types of
people and different styles. You must understand
how you are when you’re full of energy
and how you are when you’re exhausted and what that might mean for
your self-awareness and sort of your buttons that get pushed, as we all have,
and how you deal with that internally. You also need to be able to connect with
people, and that doesn’t mean you have to be an extrovert, it doesn’t mean an
introvert can’t do it either, it just means that you should know how to connect
with people in a variety of different levels. You have to communicate well,
written communication and oral communication. Communication
is very important because a lot of time HR is seen as the mouthpiece of
the organization. You have to be very organized,
because there is usually a lot of balls in the air, but I think you can say
that in any career these days. You also need presentation skills because a lot
of times you have to present, and it is not a stand-up presentation for a
workshop or in front of a large group of people,
it can be a presentation to a
board of directors or a presentation at a team meeting. There are different
levels and different styles, and you have to know how to facilitate and
negotiate well. Those are some skills needed”
What would you
say is one way someone can transfer previous experiences, knowledge, and abilities to break into the
field?
“Let me answer that in two different ways. I
think you have to sit down and look at what you have done and think about what
are the skills that you built there, and then think about what are the skills
you need in HR. You have to compare and say well ‘I was a musician so obviously, I performed a lot, that directly
correlates to presentation skills,' so
that’s very easy for me because I have years of performance which for me is
much more nerve-wracking. I think you have to compare the two and think about
what competencies you have already learned either in school or in your jobs. You have to ask yourself what
they are and what are examples of experience, and how does that correlate to a
career in HR because when you are interviewing for jobs you sometimes need to help the recruiter to bridge that
difference. The other thing is just getting experience, doing internships,
starting out at roles that may be considered more entry-level so that you can
get your foot in the door.”
What
strategies do you find work best in improving employee engagement?
“It seems obvious but one is definitely getting the employees involved. It is really critical to hear what employees have to
say and also involve them in the action planning so that they have input into what are
the tactics that are going to be put in
place. The other really important thing
is for the organization to communicate that we are doing this because you asked
for it. You have to communicate this time and
time again throughout the year and into the following year, because obviously
if you lose the thread that we are putting these things in place because you
asked for it, people won’t be able to necessarily make that correlation when
the next employee engagement survey comes around, and then your data is just not
as good as it could be.”
What do you think are the most important roles of the
HR department in relation to employees?
“I think some
have more obvious impacts on employees
such as Learning and Development, Employee Relations and Benefits because they
are day to day functions. Compensation also
does to a point, but it may be more of an overarching function, as it is not as day to day. Recruitment for the employees
is more of an indirect implication because if you do not have enough people
doing the work in the department and positions don’t get filled then it affects other people obviously,
but employees don’t see that as much as hiring managers
do.“
What are some
of the obstacles you are currently facing in retaining talent within your
industry?
“I think the
obstacles we are facing right now is that the organization has gone through a
lot of transition. For any organization, that can create some challenges. Specifically in the healthcare realm, I think retention of clinicians is extremely
challenging right now. I was just speaking about this with the New York State
Assembly this morning. We spoke about the
fact that recruitment and retention issues are the same for clinicians.
Homecare, Hospice and managed care work is
very challenging and in a very challenging environment. In Homecare, there can
be demand for high productivity, longer unpredictable hours, high demands for
paperwork for compliance, sometimes working in communities that can be
challenging. Sometimes walking into someone’s home where there could be an emergent issue
and there are all kinds of things that can happen. It is hard to find people who are passionate or willing to do that
and sometimes it’s hard for people to continue to do that because it can be
challenging. At the same time trying to make sure that they have the right
support in education and training to have the tools to do that. I think that
becomes increasingly difficult as
healthcare evolves and the reimbursement in healthcare is being reduced. We
have to be very creative in how we use our funds”
How would
President Trump’s immigration ban impact HR practices if it were to happen?
“I think it is
going to make it much more challenging. For us,
especially in the world of some of our niche jobs like analyst jobs, IT jobs
and therapists, because a lot of times, because there is a shortage of people
with specific technical skills or clinical skills, we have sponsored people
from other countries to come here and work as employees, and many have gone on
to green cards and some of them have probably become citizens too. I
think if we suddenly reduced in the number of H1B (work visas) that we are
allowed to sponsor that would diminish the pool and make it all that much
harder to fill therapist roles and IT roles,
etc.”
What advice do
you have for HR students?
“I think
definitely what you guys are doing, by being involved in a chapter of SHRM, or
another school association, that can connect you with people in the industry. I
think it is important to continuously grow your network via LinkedIn and other ways, because it is a way to get yourself known
to people in other organizations. Also, it is a network of people you can go to
and find out information about an organization and/or
position, just to get additional data as you are looking at building your
career. I think internship opportunities are always great, as I mentioned
before. I think it’s also just being
willing to getting jobs that are entry level and working your way up; sometimes it can happen very rapidly. You
have to think about getting the skills that you have already built in school
and how those apply. You are doing project management;
you are probably negotiating with people all the time, you’re leading project teams, you probably always
work with your interpersonal and communication skills on project teams. Think
about those types of examples as ways to help show how you built those HR skills.”
What about advice
for an entry-level employee trying to “breakthrough”
and obtain more of a managerial or leadership position?
“In HR, one
thing to do is try to get yourself involved in projects that may not
necessarily be in the realm of your job or even your department. I think that
is really important because then people
start seeing you and when positions become available you can naturally come to
people’s attention, but you’re also building up experience too. In an
organization, just getting involved in cross-organizational projects, things
that may be outside of your day to day work, and also helps you expand your network
within the organization. “
